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Just yesterday a friend wrote me and told about a vision he allegedly had recieved from God. In the vision there was a blindfolded couple, standing in front of a giant diamond. They didn't know there was this huge treasure, so they didn't know they could touch it and grab it if only they would reach out their arms. Your praise to D'Opus makes me sort of feel the same way.

A few cool things I can do with XÂ². Technically all of this should be more than possible with Explorer addons, the point is - are there addons existing to perform these little "tricks" for lack of a better word and if there are - how much slower will Explorer get?

First off, just browsing through the Windows system folder with Explorer and then with a replacement should give you a good idea of how unnecessarily slow Explorer is.

With XÂ² I can: - press the + key, type in abc and press enter and the pane is immediately filtered for files and folders that match the *abc* wildcard pattern

- press Alt++ (Alt and +) and specify text, every file and folder matching that wildcard is immediately selected.

- press * and the selection is immediately inverted

- Alt+J - only files are visible now, another shortcut to make just folders visible

- Alt+Enter on a folder opens it in the opposite pane

- Color code files based on all kinds of criteria

- save and restore a complex selection (how many times have you lost a complicated selection in explorer thanks to a single careless mouse click?)

- Sticky select: Only clicking a file will mark it selected/unselected, random clicks elsewhere in the window will have no effect on selection

- make a selection of files from several locations and conduct operations on them in one go. - save a selection to _disk_

"Flatten" folders: recurse and list just the files within every subfolder

Recreate a folder structure (without files) in another location with simple drag and drop

Copy only selected files to another location with their parent folder structure intact

Say I want to copy the same file to 300 folders that lie in a complex subfolder system. Simple - enumerate folders, multi paste. How much time would this take one in Explorer? More importantly, how much would one age doing it?

Besides most of the added functionality availabe for explorer is not via toolbar apps only designed for explorer but via shell context items and these are supported 100% by XÂ².

I know some of this is not everyday-use functionality, but put it all together in one (lightweight!) package, get the right external shell context functionality, get somewhat familiar with the XÂ² shortcuts (they can all be remapped to suit you) and you'll start feeling a real paradigm shift.

BTW, I've just described a small part of what XÂ² can do, the thing doesn't have a 400 page manual for nothing. But don't let that put you off coz you can do as little or as much with it as you like.

Just yesterday a friend wrote me and told about a vision he allegedly had recieved from God. In the vision there was a blindfolded couple, standing in front of a giant diamond. They didn't know there was this huge treasure, so they didn't know they could touch it and grab it if only they would reach out their arms. Your praise to D'Opus makes me sort of feel the same way.

I'm trying to figure out a good metaphor for Opus - I still have 8 & heard that with 9 the manual got much betterAnyways, with 8 it's a bit like a diamond you have to polish your self which is a bit of a slog it has to be said - I remember reading at their forum some guy saying he was going to take the manual on holidays with him

So, you do need to study it a bit, then if you have an idea of what you want to do,but need help - go to their forums where Nudel & others are very helpful.

- and maybe now I can understand why D'Opus' pricetag grew to be so enormous.

But seriously: $40 for merely updating it, and two years in college for learning how to use it??!! Get lost! I am glad that my needs are fulfilled by my slow, crude and simple but gratis Explorer combination, thank you!

SpeedCommander is in the Norton Commander mode of file management with a very clean (beautiful) interface while FileBoss is more in the mode of the old File Manager from Windows 3, 9x and NT4. It's really sharp looking, too, with a lot of excellent features.

I'll play around with both and post more on them later. For now, I thought I'd solicit opinions on either from others. I know JohnFDeluca has been using SpeedCommander but I've seen no mention of FileBoss.

Finally, another File Manager no one has mentioned recently (probably because it makes Dopus look like freeware) is PentaSuite (www.pentasuite.com). Anyone?

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Thanks for stepping into the breach, wraith. I *did* reply here moments ago but have absolutely no idea what happened to it... Essentially, it was an apology for not having replied sooner and for having nothing much to say now, other than I keep going back to DOpus 9 and have never found the time to commit to a week or so of dedicated FileBoss usage to really put it through its paces.

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Ah... here's the response that went missing. It was six tabs to the right, notifying me that wraith had beaten me to posting a response. Mystery solved.

<Cue Hysterical laughter from Darwin> Tried to post again and, of course, am informed that I've posted in the interim...

Puttin' my feet to the fire, eh Curt?!

I really liked FileBoss 1.7 and am less enthusiastic about FileBoss 2. It's incredibly powerful, but not quite as user friendly/intuitive to my mind. Now, I really haven't put it through its paces, to be honest. I keep going back to DOpus 9 because though it's pricey I am very used to it and it works exactly as I (have come to) need it to. Having said that, I think FileBoss would make an excellent file manager for anyone looking for one. It features multiple viewer panes (more than 2 - I've had up to 5 or 6 open if memory serves. It's actually not nearly as useful a feature as you might think because you can't see much of anything in any of them! Three is ideal if viewing vertical panes, four is OK when tiling them to fill the screen.

I know, not very helpful. Sorry! I keep spending my money on software that I don't really use enough to justify the expense. FileBoss is a case in point - I keep telling myself I'll use it exclusively for a week or so, but have never made the committment.

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

I have downloaded the FileBoss trial version, It looks nice however I could not see any shortcuts customization. For me that is the biggest minus. Second I cannot find a way to change to thumbnails, or list etc.

Altap Salamander has a free plug-in (loaded by default, I believe - it's been a while since I installed it) that does file comparisons. I have a "vanilla" installation of Total Commander as well, but am pretty confident that you'll find that there is a plug-in to handle file comparisons for it as well... Finally, Frigate 3.35 features a Compare Files tool, too. That's all I came up with after a cursory look at what I've got! The two that I have access too - Altap Salamander and Frigate work well.

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

... I keep spending my money on software that I don't really use enough to justify the expense. FileBoss is a case in point -

- I know what you mean. Why would I even want yet another file manager? I love my (amplified) Explorer!

I was puzzled when I re-read this post just now: What did I purchase? Oh, FileBoss!! I am embarrassed to admit that I haven't used it since the purchase, not even once! I guess my final comment in the quote is adequate: I love my (amplified) Explorer!

Heh, heh, busted! Thanks rjbull for pointing out that TotalCommander DOES do this right out of the box... I just haven't used the application enough to have known where to look for it

Tom, another one you might look at is SpeedCommander. I loved it when I trialed it but forced myself to uninstall it and move on. Don't recall off-hand if it does do file comparisons or not, but I would be surprised if it did not. At 38 euros to buy in, with 19 euro upgrades it's very pricey. Of course, this coming from a DOpus user

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

can anyone recommend a file manager that will do a simple byte comparison of two files ?

Do you mean, a built-in "diff" tool? If you do, Total Commander has it. You can compare as binary, or not (i.e. as text).

well, in DOpus you can synch folder contents by doing a "byte comparision"I actually dont want to have to look at text & compare it (or even know where the differences are) - I just want to know if they're the same or not

Heh, heh, busted! Thanks rjbull for pointing out that TotalCommander DOES do this right out of the box... I just haven't used the application enough to have known where to look for it

Tom, another one you might look at is SpeedCommander. I loved it when I trialed it but forced myself to uninstall it and move on. Don't recall off-hand if it does do file comparisons or not, but I would be surprised if it did not. At 38 euros to buy in, with 19 euro upgrades it's very pricey. Of course, this coming from a DOpus user

I did check XYplorer and didn't see anything that looked like it would do the trick. However, given its excellent file searching capabilities, I'd be surprised if there weren't something there for you to play with. However, note that Don's roadmap for XYplorer includes the addition of folder synching functionality. This, coupled with the fact that I couldn't find any mention of it file comparison in the menus nor in the help file led me to conclude that this feature is not there, yet...

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"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

It is, for the most part at least, but I don't use it much even though I did purchase a license not to long ago. If I wasn't so used to the enormous feature set and power of Dopus or the fantastic "portability features" of Xyplorer (SpeedCommander is slow beyond comprehension when running of a USB stick compared to most other file managers I've tried) I might have found more use for it though. That, and alternative keyboard layouts. It just doesn't help that they are using their own ideas for keyboard shortcuts for just about every single command (they're using Shift+DEL = Cut instead of Delete, CTRL+M to close tabs instead of CTRL+F4/W, F9 = Rename instead of F2...and the list goes on). What I would love to see is some alternative predefined layouts that uses something similar to what just about every single other Windows application use for common commands, because changing them individually one by one takes forever.

Still, they do make improvements with each release so perhaps someday it will become my weapon of choice